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Dual G4 Mac Cube
ijx writes: "Those of you with a hardware-hacking bent should enjoy this - a Mac Cube modded to accomodate dual processors, courtesy of AccelerateYourMac. It seems that it uses the same dual-proc module as a Sawtooth G4 Tower. My question: will it melt?"
..."The peak power consumption of the UltraSPARC IIe is 13W at 500 MHz, which minimizes cooling requirements for the chip and in turn a potential threat to server stability should the datacenter cooling/environmental equipment malfunction.
In fact, one of the primary barriers to broad acceptance of the Itanium by OEMs is its large 130W power appetite -- literally 10 times that of our own UltraSPARC IIe."
I am aware that cisc vs risc is a flamebait in alot of areas but risc was specifically designed to have less complexity in the chip in exchange for higher clock speeds. In many ( not all ) situations risc is usually %25-%40 faster on equilivant megahertz basis or can run at a slower megahertz and consume less power for a similar speed. X86 has alot of baggage in it and consumes alot more power then powerpc's, sparcs, and even alpha's and offers less performance or the same if its clocked ridiculously high. This would make it less hot then x86 cpu's running. I think the pentium4 and the athlon are almost an embarrassment to the electrical engineering community.
http://saveie6.com/
you should get a "overclock friendly" celeron and UNDERVOLT it instead. seriosly, im running a good old 300A at 300mhz/1.45 volts rigth now. big heatsink and no fan. works like a dream.
i also disconnected the PSU fan, but thats a nother story. (tip: run an open case, and remove the lid on your PSU box.)
i also use a voodoo3000. no fans at all then.
and read up on storagereview.com witch harddrives are silent.
--I don't understand why this comment got modded up. RISC vs. CISC has nothing to do with how much power a device uses. RISC arcs have a wide range of power consumption characteristics, from your low-power ARM to your space heaters like the Alpha.
As I recall any of the Alpha line of microprocessors (a pure RISC design) uses significantly more power than any of your desktop x86 processors (I believe in the 100W or more range).
I imagine the reason the conclusion is incorrectly drawn is due to the fact that x86 is one of the only (if not the only) high performance CISC architectures out there. Since he has only one sample point, the poster must have assumed that "all CISC designs consume more power than RISC designs".
I'm not taking the piss out of your system, I'm just saying that if you sacrifice enough performance on ANY architecture you can make it run cool. The PowerPC let's you have your cake and eat (at least half of) it too! Of course, the other alternative is to use a "mobile" chip in your desktop system, except the bastards won't sell you a socketed Mobile Athlon 4!
That was classic intercourse!
It is also noteworthy that when Apple realized they had to use a fan in the G4 tower, they did a very good job of engineering an especially efficient and quiet cooling system. It is not possible for me to hear the fan on my G4 tower, sitting approx. 6 inches from my left foot, over the noise from the god only knows how many fans in my roommate's HP, sitting about 20 feet away.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith